Today is the 300th birthday of the Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler. Euler was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time; some would say he was the greatest. I tell my students that the whole history of mathematics funnels through Euler. Everything that anyone did before, he improved on. Anything that came after has its roots in his work. That's probably an exaggeration, but only slightly.
Mathematicians, particularly those of us who are interested in the history of mathematics, have made 2007 a big year in celebration of Euler's birth. Conferences are being held, books are being published, parties are being thrown. I'm giving a talk next week at a state meeting about "A Marvelously Terrible Algorithm from Leonard Euler." It should be pretty good, I hope.
For more information on Euler, see his entry at the Mac Tutor History of Math site, from whence this image was taken.
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